When it comes to anime, there are a few important things that fans need to understand in order to fully enjoy a series. The timeline is one of the most vital aspects, and anime series like Naruto, One Piece, and Dragon Ball have never been afraid to use time jumps to help make a story better or transport characters to unique new settings. Dragon Ball Super did this multiple times to help showcase certain power jumps with characters like Goku and Vegeta, for example. In the Super Hero movie, fans might have noticed an even bigger time jump than before.
In the movie, Trunk, Goten and Pan are all much older than when we left them in the final episodes of Dragon Ball Super, so where does Super Hero actually take place timeline-wise? Thankfully, the producer of the film, Akio Iyoku, was able to break that down.
“Between this film and Toyotaro-sensei’s manga, we currently have two lines of Dragon Ball Super running,” Iyoku began. “To begin with, the film is written purely as a sequel to [Dragon Ball Super: Broly]. We wanted to pick up on and meet the expectations of everyone who’s stuck with Dragon Ball so far, along the lines of, ‘It’d be neat this happened,’ or ‘I hope this kind of character shows up.’
And in [V-Jump’s] pages, we have the continuing story of Goku and Vegeta. We’ll see new strong enemies show up, and new stories, and events will continue to progress,” Iyoku explained.
Basically, right now, the story is running on two different tracks–the manga and the anime. Those who have read the manga know that the anime has long since been a perfect recreation of it, hence why we’re getting this movie and not an adaptation of recent story arcs.
Apparently, this was done with Super Hero to have more fun and freedom without adhering too strictly to the timeline and certain other matters. The movie comes to the West this August.
Source: Twitter